Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary

Prepare and deliver lectures to undergraduate or graduate students on topics such as molecular biology, marine biology, and botany.

AI: Fully automatable - AI can research topics, generate lecture content, create slides, and deliver lectures or interactive presentations with real-time Q&A support.

Prepare materials for laboratory activities and course materials, such as syllabi, homework assignments, and handouts.

AI: Fully automatable - AI can design syllabi, assignments, handouts, and draft lab procedures and safety notes, producing ready-to-review course materials.

Maintain student attendance records, grades, and other required records.

AI: Fully automatable - AI and integrated systems can reliably record, update, and report attendance and grades and maintain required records automatically.

Assist students who need extra help with their coursework outside of class.

AI: Fully automatable - AI tutoring systems can provide timely, subject-matter explanations, practice problems, feedback, and adaptive instruction outside class that effectively covers most coursework support needs.

Compile bibliographies of specialized materials for outside reading assignments.

AI: Fully automatable - AI can comprehensively search current literature, curate and format bibliographies for specialized reading lists with high accuracy and speed, given appropriate data access.

Evaluate and grade students' class work, laboratory work, assignments, and papers.

AI: Partial - AI can automatically grade many quizzes and provide feedback on assignments but struggles with nuanced evaluation of complex work and academic integrity judgments.

Supervise students' laboratory work.

AI: Partial - AI can guide experiments remotely, monitor data, and flag safety issues but cannot provide physical supervision or assume responsibility for student safety in the lab.

Compile, administer, and grade examinations, or assign this work to others.

AI: Partial - AI can generate exam items, deliver them via platforms, and auto-grade objective and rubric-guided responses, but high-stakes subjective grading and integrity decisions still require human oversight.

Keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional conferences.

AI: Partial - AI can continuously read, synthesize, and summarize current literature and conference outputs, but it cannot fully replace embodied professional networking and active conference participation by a human scholar.

Initiate, facilitate, and moderate classroom discussions.

AI: Partial - AI can initiate and moderate online discussions and provide prompts and scaffolding, but it lacks full ability to perceive and manage in-person classroom dynamics and emotional nuances.

Supervise undergraduate or graduate teaching, internship, and research work.

AI: Partial - AI can track progress, give feedback on drafts, and help manage administrative aspects of supervision, but cannot fully replace in-person mentorship, lab oversight, and ethical judgment required for supervising students' teaching and research.

Conduct research in a particular field of knowledge and publish findings in professional journals, books, or electronic media.

AI: Partial - AI can assist substantially with literature review, data analysis, and manuscript drafting, but cannot independently design and perform physical experiments or assume full responsibility for published research.

Plan, evaluate, and revise curricula, course content, and course materials and methods of instruction.

AI: Partial - AI can generate curricula, suggest materials, and analyze outcome data to recommend revisions, but curricular planning still requires human pedagogical judgment and institutional alignment.

Advise students on academic and vocational curricula and on career issues.

AI: Partial - AI can provide personalized academic and career recommendations, labor-market data, and application materials, but nuanced vocational mentoring and institution-specific advising require human judgment and relationships.

Maintain regularly scheduled office hours to advise and assist students.

AI: Partial - AI can serve as a scheduled virtual assistant to answer routine questions, but maintaining office hours that involve confidential advising and institutional processes still necessitates human faculty presence.

Collaborate with colleagues to address teaching and research issues.

AI: Partial - AI can facilitate collaboration by synthesizing documents, drafting communications, and organizing meetings, but cannot replace human negotiation, shared decision-making, and collegial leadership in teaching and research.

Write grant proposals to procure external research funding.

AI: Partial - AI can draft and polish grant proposals, generate literature reviews and specific aims, and suggest budgets, but cannot fully replace the principal investigator's domain expertise, institutional approvals, novel research design, and accountability required to submit and steward funding.

Select and obtain materials and supplies, such as textbooks and laboratory equipment.

AI: Partial - AI can research, recommend, compare vendors and even automate ordering workflows with integrations, but selecting and procuring items often requires human judgment on pedagogy, safety, institutional procurement rules, and signatory authority.

Participate in student recruitment, registration, and placement activities.

AI: Partial - AI can automate outreach, chat-based engagement, applicant screening, and scheduling, yet recruitment, final admissions decisions, and placement often require human relationship-building and policy-based judgment.

Serve on academic or administrative committees that deal with institutional policies, departmental matters, and academic issues.

AI: Partial - AI can summarize documents, prepare briefs, and simulate deliberations to inform committee work, but cannot hold institutional office, exercise voting authority, or bear responsibility for policy decisions.

Perform administrative duties, such as serving as department head.

AI: Partial - AI can automate many administrative tasks, generate reports, and support decision-making, but cannot fully perform the leadership, personnel management, conflict resolution, and institutional accountability inherent in a department head role.

Provide students course-related experiences, such as field trips, outside the classroom.

AI: Partial - AI can fully plan itineraries, assess risks, coordinate logistics and create virtual field experiences, but cannot physically supervise students or assume legal and on-site safety responsibilities.

Review papers for publication in journals.

AI: Partial - AI can perform thorough technical checks, reproducibility analyses, and suggest edits, yet peer review requires nuanced expert judgment, ethical responsibility, and domain reputation that currently requires human reviewers.

Participate in campus and community events, such as giving presentations to the public.

AI: Partial - AI can prepare and even deliver virtual presentations or support scripted public talks, but cannot fully replicate the live interpersonal presence, local community relationships, and event responsibilities of a human participant.

Act as advisers to student organizations.

AI: Partial - AI can advise on logistics, planning, bylaws, and offer mentoring resources, but it cannot fully substitute for human advisors' judgment, institutional authority, emotional support, and responsibility for student organizations.

Provide professional consulting services to government or industry.

AI: Partial - AI can generate analyses, recommendations, and briefing materials for consulting but lacks the professional credentials, liability, client relationship management, and real-world judgment to fully replace a human consultant.